Who treats the guilty with mercy? American governments do, and many Americans think it is right.

Why so gross an offense to justice?

These are extracts from an article by Daniel Greenfield at his website, Sultan Knish:

In 1997, Mohammed T. Mehdi, the head of the Arab-American Committee and the National Council on Islamic Affairs, lobbied to have a crescent and star put up at the World Trade Center during the holiday season. His wish was granted, despite the fact that he had been an adviser to Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman also known as the Blind Sheikh.

In the name of diversity and political correctness, an adviser to the religious leader behind the World Trade Center bombing [in 1993], was allowed to plant an Islamic symbol of conquest in the very place that had been bombed.

Long before the Ground Zero Mosque was even a twinkle in the eye of a violent ex-waiter and a slumlord Imam, the World Trade Center allowed Mohammed T. Mehdi to bully it into flying the symbol of Islam.

By 1997, Mohammed T. Mehdi had become an unambiguously ugly public figure. He had been fired by Mayor Dinkins in 1992 for anti-Semitic remarks. The year before he had proclaimed that, “Millions of Arabs believe Saddam stands tall having defied Western colonialism”.

The Third World Muslims pick up words like “colonialism” as a pejorative from the West’s ideologues of the Left. In fact, no colonists in history subjugated the nations they conquered more ruthlessly than did the Muslim Arabs.

In 1995, the US Attorney’s Office in New York had listed Mehdi as anunindicted co-conspirator in the trial of Sheikh Rahman. Mehdi had already published a book titled “Kennedy and Sirhan: Why?”, which contended that Robert Kennedy’s assassin had been acting in self-defense.

Because of Mehdi’s role in actively working on behalf of the Sheikh behind the wave of terrorism that included the original attack on the World Trade Center, turning down his request should have been a no-brainer. Instead in the winter of 1997 there was an Islamic star and crescent at the World Trade Center. And another one at the park in front of the White House. …

The previous year had marked the first annual Ramadan dinner at the State Department, integrating the Islamic celebration into the Clinton Administration’s schedule of events. Bill Clinton had not visited the World Trade Center after the bombing, but he did make time for Ramadan.

A month after 9/11, Bush went Clinton one better when he became the first president to host a Ramadan dinner at the White House. Many of the Muslim ambassadors at the event were representing countries that helped finance Al Qaeda. Little more than a month after September 11, the President of the United States sat down to break bread with the money men behind the attacks.

The Star and Crescent flying at the World Trade Center did not prevent it from being targeted in a second greater attack four years later. Nor did the Ramadan dinners keep the plane headed for the White House at bay. It took the self-sacrifice of its American passengers to do that. Instead every gesture of appeasement only seemed to make it worse.

Before the star and crescent flew at the World Trade Center, the site suffered only a few dead. After it, thousands dead.

The more Ramadan dinners Bush hosted, the more Americans died, because the Star and Crescent and the Ramadan dinners both expressed a deliberate blindness to the threat of Islamic terrorism.

No one who understood what had happened at the World Trade Center in 1993, would have permitted a banner associated with its attackers to be flown there. But while the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey let Mehdi have his way with the World Trade Center, other Muslims were working to carry out Sheikh Abdel-Rahman’s agenda for a war on America and the free world.

“Cut the transportation of their countries,” the blind Sheik had commanded, “tear it apart, destroy their economy, burn their companies, eliminate their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, kill them on the sea, air, or land.” …

While the US was busy bombing Yugoslavian civilians in order to create a separatist Muslim state for KLA terrorists; Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were recruiting the first of the 9/11 hijackers. While the United States tried to appease Muslims, Muslims plotted to murder Americans.

In 1997, the New York Daily News wrote an upbeat story about Mehdi’s Star and Crescent, which envisioned Islam blending merrily into the holiday season.

New York may seem a little brighter this holiday season as the glowing Muslim crescent and star symbol nudges its way onto a seasonal landscape of Christmas trees, menorahs and Kwanzaa candles.

Four years later, cheery folks yelling “Allahu Akbar” filled downtown Manhattan with ashen snow and brightened it with the flames of the burning towers of the World Trade Center. …

While “Americans were picking up the pieces of their loved ones, it was they who were told to be sensitive to Muslim concerns.”

New York City schools [made] arrangements for Muslim prayers out of “heightened sensitivity to Muslim concerns after the Sept. 11 attack”.

Instead of Americans being on the receiving end of “heightened sensitivity”, the ideology that had conspired to murder them was.

And so it continued, the appeasement, the grovelling:

On the 9th anniversary of 9/11, Islam had another gift for New Yorkers. Having bought up a building damaged in their own attack, they plotted to set up a grand mosque near Ground Zero. Another gift to New Yorkers from the religion that kept on giving. Another Crescent and Star.

The same people who did not learn the lesson in 1997, and allowed the Crescent and Star to fly at the World Trade Center, were eager to let the Ground Zero Mosque go forward in the name of tolerance. But despite the Crescent and Star, appeasement proved to be no defense.

3,000 died on 9/11 because American leaders preferred to appease, rather than confront. And we are still busy appeasing, like never before.

When the sensitive treat the brutal sensitively, and the brutal treat the sensitive brutally, who will win?